Table Of ContentSHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
The Problems Solved
Books by A. L. Rowse
Shakespeare the Man
Shakespeare's Southampton: Patron of Virginia
Christopher Marlowe: a Biography
The Annotated Shakespeare, 3 vols with Introductions
The Elizabethan Age:
The England of Elizabeth I
The Expansion of Elizabethan England
The Elizabethan Renaissance: I The Life of the Society
II The Cultural Achievement
Eminent Elizabethans
The Elizabethans and America
Ralegh and the Throckmortons
Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge
Tudor Cornwall
Milton the Puritan: Portrait of a Mind
Jonathan Swift: Major Prophet
Matthew Arnold: Poet and Prophet
The Byrons and Trevanions
The Early Churchills
The Later Churchills
A Cornish Childhood
A Cornishman at Oxford
A Cornishman Abroad
A Man of the Thirties
A Life: Collected Poems
SOUTHAMPTON AT THE PERIOD
OF THE SONNETS
SHAKESPEARE'S
SONNETS
A Modern Edition,
with Prose Versions, Introduction and Notes
by
A. L. ROWSE
THIRD EDITION
M
MACMILLAN PRESS
LONDON
© A. L. Rowse 1964, 1973, 1984
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission
First Edition February 1964
Reprinted October 1964
Second Edition 1973
Reprinted 1976
Third Edition 1984
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TO
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-36387-4 ISBN 978-1-349-17393-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17393-8
To
President Ronald Reagan
for his professional appreciation
of
William Shakespeare
CONTENTS
Introduction to the Third Edition page IX
The Sonnets 1
Introduction to the Third Edition
WHO MR W.H. WAS
All the problems of Shakespeare's Sonnets-for long regarded as
the greatest of literary mysteries-have now been solved
unanswerably, as in this edition. All of them were solved in my
original biography, William Shakespeare (1964), except one: the
identity of his young mistress, the Dark Lady. I might never have
discovered her, if my original findings-the date when the
Sonnets were written, the explanation of the publisher's dedication,
the identification of Mr W. H., and the rival poet-had not been
correct. Discovering the identity of the Dark Lady (when not
looking for her) was a bonus for getting all the other answers right,
and also for sticking to my last without giving up, in spite of every
kind of obtuseness, obfuscation and obstruction.
I must admit that it is very difficult for people to get the story of
the Sonnets right, the story is so subtle and complex. It is no use
people trying their hand-as hundreds have done-or hoping to
get it right, unless they are immersed in the Elizabethan age,
Shakespeare's own background, and have spent a lifetime of
research in it. They simply do not qualify to hold an opinion on
these difficulties, beginning with the dating-an indispensable pre
condition of getting it right. This is where an Elizabethan historian
is indispensable, to read the topical references in the Sonnets, which
are in logical and intelligible sequence as they are.
Many literary scholars have been all over the place in dating:
hence their confusion and the consequent worthlessness of their
work. However, it must be allowed that the majority of literary
scholars have got the dating right-the Sonnets were written 1592
to I 594/5-on the obvious, commonsense ground that they were
written along with Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece,
published respectively in I 593 and I 594· The tradition in the main
line was right; all my findings are in keeping with it,
conservative-and, what is new and original, no less traditional
but definitive. No need for controversy-mere waste of time -let
alone all the confusion from crackpots, some of them making
money out of confusing the public's mind. I greatly blame the
academic Shakespeareans, who complain at all the confusion they
have to contend with, for leaving the gates wide open for the crack
pots to canter in, for leaving questions open and uncertain
when they have been settled for them-not by themselves but, less
surprisingly, by a leading authority on the age in which
Shakespeare lived and wrote.
As the very outset there is a stumbling block which has been
responsible for a great deal of the confusion : Thomas Thorp, the
publisher's, dedication. He had got the manuscript of the Sonnets
some fifteen years after Shakespeare had ceased writing them,
immersed as he was in the work of the Lord Chamberlain's
Company-acting, writing, producing, touring-from 1594
when it was founded. Everybody knows that T. T., Thomas
Thorp, wrote the dedication, and scholars know that he was given
to writing flowery dedications. He dedicated the Sonnets to Mr
W. H., the only person who had got the manuscript-so the
crucial point to notice is that Mr W. H. was the publisher's dedicatee,
not Shakespeare's, who had nothing to do with the publication.
My old friend, Agatha Christie-a good Shakespearean-used
to say that everybody misses the significance of the obvious. It is
obvious to everybody that Mr W. H. was Thorp's man, and yet
almost everybody continues to assume that Mr W. H. was
Shakespeare's young man to whom he addressed the Sonnets.
How obtuse! when the young lord of the Sonnets is the obvious
person, the patron, Southampton. Again, the majority of literary
scholars, from Malone onwards, have realised that, without being
able to explain the odd dedication.
I must again allow that it is difficult for people to get this right.
Even those eminent scholars, Sir Edmund Chambers and Professor
Dover Wilson, got it wrong on the assumption that Mr W. H. was
Shakespeare's man, not drawing the conclusion from the
undeniable fact that he was the publisher's man. Chambers was
massively learned but imperceptive; Dover Wilson had bright
insights, but was enthusiastic and notoriously erratic. They both of
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